Casey's Cottage: Part OneIn the first leg of her Casey's Cottage tour, reporter Melinda Johnson "meets" Dr. Casey and learn about ghostly happenings within the cottage from tour guide Betty Green. Video by Katrina Tulloch.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- At Casey's Cottage on Lake Ontario, it doesn't have to be Friday the 13th for strange incidents to happen. Visitors might see a candle fly off the fireplace mantel, lights flicker, a chandelier sway and translucent figures slide by. Betty Green knows the cottage at Mexico Point State Park is haunted. These mysterious occurrences and more have put the re-created medieval manor on the map -- of the Haunted History Trail of New York state.

For Green, it is the "history, fine art work and beauty of the place, the serenity of the park" that she finds appealing. "It's just a wonderful place to spend a leisurely afternoon." She has been visiting the park since her childhood in the 1940s and has been involved with the restoration of the cottage since 1995.

The cottage was the realization of the dream of Casey, a professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York City. He would summer at the nearby Mexico Point Club House, which burned in 1952. Casey's friendship with Severin Bischof, a German master painter and craftsman who worked for Syroco, an ornamental woodworking company, was the perfect partnership for the project. Casey had the cash and Bischof had the skills. It was the creative Bischof who designed and left his artistic imprint on the cottage. Casey died in 1978 and Bischof four years later in 1982.

Visitors who step inside will find rough-hewn walls with medieval knights and ladies etched into the woodwork and exposed beams in the great hall carved with Old English quotes. A massive stone fireplace extends to the floor above. The second-floor bedrooms are small and have doors that exit onto a balcony looking down onto the great hall. A narrow, almost impassable, teeny staircase leads to a tiny chapel. It was a memorial to Casey's mother.

While some visitors may be spooked by the place, Green says marriage proposals, weddings and plays have taken place there. Those interested can visit the cottage from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays in July and August at the park, 120 Mexico Point Drive, Mexico. Appointments also can be scheduled. A Haunted House Tour is scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. Aug. 27. Admission is $5 per person or $15 for a family of four. Children, 10 years and younger, are admitted for free.